Inform November 2020
Updated 18 January 2022
Applies to England
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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sfa-inform/inform-november-2020
1. Information: ILR validation rules version 4 published
The ILR Specification Team has published a new version of the Validation Rules for 2020 to 2021 (version 4) to include the Field Definition rules.
The Field Definition rules enforce the schema definitions on the ILR Specification.
These rules are not new to the specification, and have always been in use, however were not previously published to view in the documentation.
The new version can be viewed in the ILR specification validation rules 2020 to 2021.
2. Information: 2019 to 2020 Final Reconciliation Statements
Thank you for submitting your 2019 to 2020 final funding claim.
The reconciliation statements will be available for you to view on the Manage your Education Skills and Funding service by the end of November 2020. This will set out the final position for the 2019 to 2020 funding year and will inform the funding that you will be required to repay (if applicable) or over delivery funding that we will pay.
If you have submitted a business case for review, we will send you your reconciliation statement by the end of December after the case has been reviewed.
Final Reconciliation Statements are published following submission of a final funding claim for the following funding streams:
- ESFA AEB – Adult Skills and Community Learning – grant-funded
- ESFA AEB – 19 to 24 Traineeships – grant funded
- ESFA AEB – Adult Skills Learner Support – paid-on-profile (AEB procured)
- ESF AEB – 19 to 24 Traineeships Learner Support – paid on profile (procured)
- Advanced Learner Loans Bursary (ALLB) – grant-funded
If you are required to repay funds back to us, we will schedule those repayments from December 2020 in discussion with you.
3. Information: Monitoring post-16 funding
We are publishing our final set of reports for the 2019 to 2020 funding year. We will now calculate any overclaim of funds and offset this value against either final claims or future delivery, depending on the affected funding streams.
You will be notified if there are any funds to be recovered, and the value of any identified errors.
To coincide with this, we will release a new post-16 monitoring reports dashboard in View your education data on Tuesday 10 November. This will be populated with R14 data, and will contain the same records as the reports you access through Submit learner data.
This is in preparation for the release of the 2020 to 2021 reports after R04, giving you the opportunity to test and familiarise yourself with the new format which we will use to share data with you.
There will be the opportunity to provide feedback on this new dashboard, which will help us to finalise the product for the release of the new reports in December.
A new, simplified, reports user guide has been published on gov.uk to support the new dashboard. The user guide explains how to access and navigate the dashboard, with details of how you can export all of your data in a single file for importing into your own systems.
It provides you with details of the reports that support Financial assurance: monitoring the funding rules for post-16 funding for 2020 to 2021, including the actions you need to take and what we will do to assure funding.
If you need any further support, please submit an enquiry.
4. Information: Submit learner data service improvements
As part of the planned service improvements to Submit Learner Data (SLD), we will soon be switching off the old Learning Aims website (part of the Hub).
The SLD team launched ‘Find a learning aim’ as a replacement in August and this has been running in parallel to the Learning Aims website since then.
The Learning Aims website will stop being updated at the end of October 2020 and will be switched off within this calendar year. We encourage you to use ‘Find a learning aim’ to ensure you have the most up to date information.
Please note that find a learning aim will continue to support ‘full data set download’ and the underlying table structure remains unchanged.
If you have any questions, please submit an ESFA online enquiry form.
5. Information: Redundant apprentices: Statutory Instrument
New legislation allowing more redundant apprentices to complete their apprenticeships came into force on 15th October.
Currently the Education and Skills Funding Agency continue to fund the apprentice to complete their programme if they are made redundant within six months of their final day of training.
This allows apprentices that are close to the end of their apprenticeship to continue on programme while they look for another employer to complete their apprenticeship with, or, if they are unable to find one, allow them to complete their apprenticeship without an employer.
The amended legislation will help to support more redundant apprentices affected by COVID-19.
The amended legislation will extend this support to also fund to completion all apprentices who are at least 75% of their way through their apprenticeship at the point of redundancy.
This will give apprentices who have made a substantial and long-term investment in their apprenticeship the opportunity to complete their training and achieve occupational competence.
These changes will mean more redundant apprentices can complete their apprenticeship, putting them in a stronger position to secure new employment. The change applies to apprentices undertaking both standards and frameworks.
The Redundancy Support Service for Apprentices continues, providing free advice and guidance to apprentices affected by redundancy, as well as helping them to identify new apprenticeship opportunities available across the country.
More information can be found by visiting our information on funding support for apprentices who have been made redundant.